NOTE: The Power Vertical Briefing is RFE/RL’s short look ahead to the stories expected to make news in Russia in the coming week. It is hosted by Brian Whitmore, author of the Power Vertical blog, and appears every Monday. Reports have surfaced that Vladimir Yakunin, a longtime crony of Vladimir Putin, is being investigated by […]
Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. For links to individual updates click on the timestamps. For the latest summary of evidence surrounding the shooting down of flight MH17 see our separate article: […]
Among Russian politicians who had already established relations with the Western far right in the 1990s, Sergey Glazyev, currently an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the issues of regional economic integration, is one of the most prominent. In 1992-1993, Glazyev was Minister of External Economic Relations of the Russian Federation, but resigned in […]
The frenzied world-wide front is expanding Mercy to no one, no one, no one! Stanza from 1989 Russian anarchists’ song Vintovka – eto prazdnik (The Rifle is a Holiday) By the Russian punk bank Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Civil Defense) The annexation of Crimea, the “Novorossiya” project, and the fight against the “Kyiv junta” are not supported […]
Although the Ukrainian army is progressing, the war in eastern Ukraine is still far from decided. It is never too soon however, to examine the situation in Ukraine behind these rapidly developing headlines, and to explore what might be ahead of Ukraine if a Ukrainian reclamation of the Donbass region succeeds. Because even if the […]
Staunton, July 25 – Despite the horrors Vladimir Putin’s regime continues to inflict on Ukraine, increasingly frequent calls in Moscow for the Kremlin leader to conduct a Stalinist-style crackdown and his disposition to follow them could very well mean that the citizens of the Russian Federation will in the end be the greatest victims of […]
Staunton, April 24 – It is notoriously easier to spark a protest movement than to control its direction thereafter or to ensure that it does not become a model for others one does not want to be involved in. That risk is now on display in eastern Ukraine where pro-Moscow activists are not only seeking […]
John Wilson, a Scottish writer, is the author of The City of the Plague, a scary story from the 17th century which takes place in London. In Russian school, we don’t study Wilson, but we read Alexander Pushkin. Among Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, there is one called A Feast in the Time of the Plague, a […]
It is safe to say that publicly challenging Putin means that you may find yourself facing charges of money laundering, extortion, or the regime’s curiously esoteric understanding of hooliganism. The experiences of Pussy Riot, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexei Navalny have all shown the repercussions that dissent entails. Now, however, it seems that even disagreeing with […]
